Finding Home

My dad was in the Army when I was growing up. My brothers, who were much older than me, spent their childhoods among extended family in Massachusetts and Connecticut. I grew up moving every two to three years, first to Japan then to Kentucky then to New Mexico then to Germany then to Pennsylvania. 

Where was home? Was it where my grandmother lived? But she died when I was not yet 14. Or was it where I was born? But we moved away from there when I was 5 and never lived there again. People would ask me where I was from, what place I called home and I would freeze with uncertainty — because I didn’t know. For me, home had become where my stuff and I lived; my stuff made home for me.

So I have thought a lot about home over the years — what it means, what makes home.

In December I was asked if I would like to offer a program at the Maine Jung Center. I immediately jumped at the chance and told them I wanted to present on “What is Home?”. And so on 3 Sundays in March I will meet with folks to talk about and write about Home (follow the link if you’d like to attend — it will be on Zoom).

I have lived in Maine since 1972 — it just hit me that is almost 50 years! If home is to be had in my life, then it is Maine. I lived in and not far from Portland for almost 30 years. I loved Portland and especially loved the duplex I lived in there my last 7 years — in fact when a fire destroyed it around 5 years ago, I felt its destruction keenly. In 2005 my husband and I moved to Belfast, Maine. For the last 16 years we have rented a house with perhaps the best view in Belfast, though the house itself is, to be charitable, a bit funky. The view of the bay has been enough for all this time to make the quirks of the house tolerable. But things became a bit difficult when the steep stairs began to pose problems for me. Then came the knowledge that the owners hope to sell it. Through the network of friends we have here we learned of first one possibility then another. And so it has come to be that in a couple of moths we will move to another house, less than a mile from where I am writing this today. We will lose the view but gain a house that is less quirky and easier for us to live in. The sixteen years I have lived in this house has been the longest I have lived anywhere. I’ll miss the view — the house not so much. 

After all these years it seems home is still in large measure where I live with my stuff, so long as my stuff and I are in Maine.